The UK Financial Conduct Authority recently announced that it imposed a £21,091,300 fine on Monzo Bank Ltd for anti-money laundering deficiencies that were allegedly caused by Monzo’s rapid growth between 2018 and 2022. The bank’s customer base reportedly increased almost tenfold, from approximately 600,000 customers in 2018 to more than 5.8 million in 2022. According to the FCA, the bank’s rapid growth continued into 2025, with the bank reaching more than 12 million personal and business customers as of April 2025.
The FCA reported that, between October 2018 and August 2020, the bank “failed to design, implement and maintain adequate customer onboarding, customer risk assessment and transaction monitoring systems to mitigate the risk the financial crime.” These failures prompted the FCA to conduct a comprehensive, independent review of the bank’s financial crime framework in August 2020, which resulted in the FCA imposing a requirement that prevented the bank from accepting or processing new or additional account applications for high-risk customers. According to the FCA, Monzo was fined because it failed to implement this requirement and allegedly signed up more than 34,000 high-risk customers between August 2020 and June 2022. According to Therese Chambers, FCA’s joint executive director of enforcement and market oversight, the bank’s deficiencies enabled accounts to be opened, in some cases, by customers that submitted the addresses of well-known London landmarks as their own.
According to the FCA, the bank agreed to resolve these matters and, therefore, qualified for a 30 percent discounted fine under the FCA’s processes. The FCA also acknowledged that bank has worked to remediate and enhance its financial crime framework with the help of a Skilled Person. The remediation efforts include the establishment of a financial crime change program aimed at resolving known weaknesses and improvements recommended by the Skilled Person in the areas of customer due diligence, customer risk assessments, and transaction monitoring.